The rule in each version
| Version | Pages | What qualifies | Audiobooks |
|---|---|---|---|
| 75 Hard | 10 | Non-fiction or personal development, physical book | No |
| 75 Soft | 10 | Any book — fiction counts | Looser; decide in advance |
| 75 Medium | 10 | Any book | Usually accepted |
Why ten pages and not thirty minutes
A page count is a finished unit of work. Thirty minutes of reading can be thirty minutes of the same paragraph while your phone buzzes; ten pages cannot. It is also small enough to be non-negotiable — ten pages is about fifteen minutes, which exists on every day of your life including the worst one.
That is the same reasoning behind the daily photo and the water target: pick something so small that “I did not have time” is never true, and the only remaining variable is whether you decided to do it.
The details people get wrong
- You cannot bank pages. Reading fifty pages on Sunday does not cover the week. Every version treats it as a daily minimum, and batching it removes the daily-decision property that the rule exists for.
- Finishing a book mid-page still needs ten pages that day. Start the next one. Have the next book chosen before you need it — running out of book on day 43 is a surprisingly common way to break a streak.
- Re-reading counts. No version says the pages must be new to you.
- E-books are the genuinely contested case. 75 Soft is fine with them. Strict readings of 75 Hard call for a physical book; looser ones accept an e-reader. Pick your reading on day one and hold it.
The pattern behind all of these. Where a rule is ambiguous, the challenge is not really asking which interpretation is correct — it is asking whether you keep the interpretation you chose when it stops being convenient. Write yours down on day one.
Non-fiction only, on 75 Hard
75 Hard asks for non-fiction or personal development, in keeping with its framing as a mental toughness program rather than a fitness or leisure challenge. 75 Soft deliberately dropped that restriction — its creator's version accepts any book, fiction included, on the reasonable grounds that a habit you enjoy is a habit that survives.
If you are doing 75 Hard and the self-improvement genre grinds you down by week four, that is worth noticing rather than pushing through. Biography, history, popular science and craft books are all non-fiction, and the rule does not require the book to be about discipline.
Making the ten pages actually happen
- Attach it to something fixed — coffee, the commute, the ten minutes before sleep. An unattached habit competes with your phone and loses.
- Keep the book where the habit happens. The friction of fetching it is the whole reason people miss this one.
- Do it early on hard days. Ten pages at 11pm after two workouts is how a 75-day streak ends over the easiest rule on the list.